," and Brown should
reply to Smith, "And you're a liar," what would you think? It would
simply be because Smith, never having seen it himself, didn't believe
Brown; and Brown, never having seen it, didn't believe Smith had. Now,
if Smith had really seen it, and Brown told him he had seen it too,
then Smith would regard it as a corroboration of his story, and he
would regard Brown as one of his principal witnesses. But, on the
contrary, he says, "You never saw it." So, when man says, "I was upon
Mount Sinai, and there I met God, and he told me, 'Stand aside and let
me drown these people';" and another man says to him, "I was upon a
mountain, and there I met the Supreme Brahma," and Moses says, "That's
not true," and contends that the other man never did see Brahma, and he
contends that Moses never did see God, that is in my judgment proof
that they both speak truly.

Every religion, then, has charged every other religion with having been
an unmitigated fraud; and yet, if any man had ever seen the miracle
himself, his mind would be prepared to believe that another man had
seen the same thing. Whenever a man appeals to a miracle he tells what
is not true. Truth relies upon reason, and the undeviating course of
all the laws of nature.

Now, we have a religion--that is, some people have. I do not pretend to
have religion myself. I believe in living for this world--that's my
doctrine--in living here, now, to-day, to-night--that's my doctrine, to
make everybody happy that you can. Now, let the future take care of
itself and if I ever touch the shores of another world I will be just
as ready and anxious to get into some remunerative employment as
anybody else. Now, we have got in this country a religion which men
have preached for about eighteen hundred years, and just in proportion
as their belief in that religion has grown great, men have grown mean
and wicked; just in proportion as they have ceased to believe it, men
have become just and charitable. And if they believe it to-night as
they once believed it, I wouldn't be allowed to speak in the city of
New York. It is from the coldness and infidelity of the churches that I
get my right to preach; and I say it to their credit. Now we have a
religion. What is it? They say in the first place that all this vast
universe was created by a deity. I don't know whether it was or not.
They say, too, that had it not been for the first sin of Adam there
would never have been any devil